This first volume of Cambridge Medieval Classics offers the text of nine of the most outstanding plays composed and performed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the period of the finest flowering of medieval Latin drama. Newly edited and translated, the texts are given in both Latin and English, with detailed notes and apparatus to aid interpretation. They are selected to represent the range of dramatic achievement between about 1050 and 1180, when the use of sung play-texts, within a context of liturgical ceremony as well as for secular entertainment, was at its peak. The plays chosen are boldly inventive and compellingly imaginative, revealing the depth and range of the medieval dramatic mind. Included are works from France and Germany, a piece by Hildegard of Bingen, and the Passion Play from the Carmina Burana.
